Posts Tagged ‘
Trump ’

President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw American troops from Syria was made hastily, without consulting his national security team or allies, and over strong objections from virtually everyone involved in the fight against the Islamic State group, according to U.S. and Turkish officials.

Trump stunned his Cabinet, lawmakers and much of the world with the move by rejecting the advice of his top aides and agreeing to a withdrawal in a phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan last week, two officials briefed on the matter told The Associated Press.

Well who ya gonna trust, your own aides or that nice Mister Erdoğan? He’s so good at that authoritarian thing, you … Read the rest

The Trump administration is setting out to do what this year’s farm bill didn’t: tighten work requirements for millions of Americans who receive federal food assistance.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Thursday is proposing a rule that would restrict the ability of states to exempt work-eligible adults from having to obtain steady employment to receive food stamps.

William P. Barr, President Trump’s nominee to be attorney general, wrote an unsolicited memo to top Justice Department officials in June objecting to the notion that Mr. Trump may have committed the crime of obstruction of justice.

And by “memo” they don’t mean a short note scribbled on an office pad with “Memo” at the top.

In a 19-page memo, Mr. Barr sharply criticized an apparent aspect of the investigation by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, that Mr. Trump may have committed a crime by trying to get the F.B.I. director at the time, James B. Comey, to quash the criminal investigation into his first national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, and later by

A reporter asks Sarah Sanders if Trump shouldn’t, rather than speaking just for himself and in his own interest, speak to and for the American people. She of course responds with a misdirection, explaining that the people elected Trump [they didn’t, actually] because they want his opinion and he should give it.

Then she explains how evil and unfair the FBI is.

We know for a fact that the FBI engaged in an outrageous amount of political bias, the fact that the FBI could deny that there was political bias within the FBI particularly under James Comey’s leadership is frankly just laughable.

But Comey was a lifelong Republican, until he ran up against Trump and his attempts to extort special … Read the rest

It is so damn galling to hear the WH press secretary attacking the FBI for doing its job and catching a criminal in the act rather than being mad at the criminal who lied not just to the FBI, but supposedly also to people in the WH.

During the White House press briefing, a reporter asked White House press secretary Sarah Sanders to clarify if the White House was disputing that Flynn “is a liar.”

“We’re disputing any actions he engaged in had nothing to do with the President. Just because, maybe he did do those things, but that doesn’t have anything to do with the President directly,” Sanders said.

The Donald J. Trump Foundation will close and give away all its remaining funds under judicial supervision amid a lawsuit accusing the charity and the Trump family of using it illegally for self-dealing and political gain, the New York attorney general’s office announced Tuesday.

The attorney general, Barbara Underwood, accused the foundation of “a shocking pattern of illegality” that was “willful and repeated” and included unlawfully coordinating with Mr. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

“This amounted to the Trump Foundation functioning as little more than a checkbook to serve Mr. Trump’s business and political interests,” Ms. Underwood said.

In short, he’s a crook and a liar and a fraud and a thief…and he’s also the president of the United … Read the rest

Laurence Tribe is profoundly aghast at the notion that a crook can crook his way into the presidency and then be untouchable on account of how the Justice Department Has Ruled that a sitting president can’t be indicted. The problem with that is obvious. If he got the position by committing crimes, how can it make sense to then make the very position he got by criminal means the thing that protects him from law enforcement? It’s absurd and it’s also…you know…a fucking disaster.

Pinned tweet:

NEW RULE:

Cheat & lie & commit enough felonies to become president — and you’ll get not just the office with all its powers, but a permanent get-out-of-jail-free card!

Luciano Guerra voted for Trump and now he’s surprised and sad that Trump is shoving a border wall right down the middle of the wildlife center where Guerra works.

I work at the National Butterfly Center — which is along the U.S.-Mexico border — documenting wildlife and leading educational tours. Many of our visitors are young students from the Rio Grande Valley. When they first arrive, some of the children are scared of everything, from the snakes to the pill bugs. Here, we can show them animals that roam free and teach them not to be afraid. We talk about how we planted native vines, shrubs and trees to attract some 240 species of butterflies, as well as dragonflies, grasshoppers

They were collateral damage as Donald J. Trump and his siblings dodged inheritance taxes and gained control of their father’s fortune: thousands of renters in an empire of unassuming red-brick buildings scattered across Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island.

Those buildings have been home to generations of strivers, municipal workers and newly arrived immigrants. When their regulated rents started rising more quickly in the 1990s, many tenants had no idea why. Some heard that the Trump family had spent millions on building improvements, but they

Trump’s calling Cohen a “RAT” on Twitter is getting some lawyerly attention.

Sir, in mobster lingo, a ‘rat’ is a witness who tells prosecutors real incriminating info. Perhaps a different word? Searches of lawyer’s offices common enough that DOJ has a procedure for them. Here it yielded evidence of crimes you said he should be jailed for. You should stop. https://t.co/EV1txBYrhz

My former colleague Andy McCarthy, one of the President's most steady and articulate defenders, is starting to take the measure of the man he has so vigorously defended. POTUS's language reflects the mentality of an at risk mob boss, not of a President.There is a reason for that. https://t.co/FXTVqt1Rdf

Wow, 19,000 Texts between Lisa Page and her lover, Peter S of the FBI, in charge of the Russia Hoax, were just reported as being wiped clean and gone. Such a big story that will never be covered by the Fake News. Witch Hunt!

A REAL scandal is the one sided coverage, hour by hour, of networks like NBC & Democrat spin machines like Saturday Night Live. It is all nothing less than unfair news coverage and Dem commercials. Should be tested in courts, can’t be legal? Only defame & belittle! Collusion?

Donald Trump continues to reject the judgments of US spy agencies on major foreign policy fronts, current and former US officials said, creating a dynamic in which intelligence analysts frequently see troubling gaps between the president’s public statements and the facts laid out for him in daily briefings.

The pattern has become a source of mounting concern to senior US intelligence officials who had hoped Mr Trump would become less hostile to their work and more receptive to the information that spy agencies spend billions of dollars and sometimes put lives at risk gathering.

Trump has ranted about why no one around him is doing anything to stop any of it and vented about the lack of support he believes he has in Congress and within his own White House, the sources tell NBC News.

In addition to the much-anticipated report from Mueller on the Russia investigation, Democrats could ask prosecutors in the SDNY to similarly share details of their probe into Cohen that are related to the president.

Ohhh, could they indeed.

Trump has in recent days been made aware of this possibility from people close to him, opening up a new vulnerability for the president.

The sentencing marked the culmination of a months-long saga that began in April with a dramatic FBI raid on Cohen’s home and office and ended with Trump’s most loyal lieutenant and fixer—who once said he would take a bullet for his boss—turning against the president and implicating him directly in criminal misconduct. In Manhattan federal court on Wednesday, Cohen apologized to his family and to “the people of the United States.”

As well he might, since he did his bit to get Trump elected president. Maybe without his bit Trump wouldn’t have been elected? It was very close. Some 50 thousand votes or so in … Read the rest

This is quite important. One by one, the career DOJ prosecutors are removing possible Trump defenses. Now it isn’t just Cohen, but also AMI, saying these hush money payments were made to influence the 2016 Presidential election, and knock out the so-called “Edwards defense” https://t.co/FzH7pRYAPP

Judge William H. Pauley III said Mr. Cohen had committed a “veritable smorgasbord” of crimes involving deception and “motivated by personal greed and ambition,” each of which “standing alone warrant serious punishment.”

Moments after returning to Capitol Hill after an Oval Office standoffwith President Trump, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi questioned Trump’s manhood and said the border wall was a matter of masculine pride.

“It’s like a manhood thing for him. As if manhood could ever be associated with him. This wall thing,” said the California congresswoman.

Wall! Yooge wall! Yooge throbbing wall!

She told colleagues that she was “trying to be the mom” in the room while Trump and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) bickered about the coming funding showdown.

But she described Trump’s admission during the 17-minute on-camera tete-a-tete that he would be “proud” to shut the government as a political triumph.

“I am proud to shut down the government,” he announces in his dopy shouty petulant scratchy voice.

Oh. My. God. This may be the single stupidest thing that Trump has said on camera. Well, maybe #2 after confessing to Lester Holt that he fired Comey because of “the Russia thing.” But still—wow. https://t.co/JnWuECdC2i